


there was you, you, you

by smileymikey



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25674493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smileymikey/pseuds/smileymikey
Summary: Across the quad, the sound of laughter. Ugly, full belly-laughter, and when Even turns he sees a group of boys but one of them is bent at the waist laughing, and he has blond hair that glints in the thin morning light and green eyes like the candles Even’s mum lights during the winter. The entire courtyard is grey and hazed in the thinning summer but this boy is in full definition, slow-motion and hyper speed all at once, and Even finds he can’t pull his eyes away for even a moment.He doesn’t think there are enough gold stars in the world to describe what he’s feeling right now.or, Even learns to be happy.
Relationships: Even Bech Næsheim/Isak Valtersen
Comments: 23
Kudos: 160





	there was you, you, you

**Author's Note:**

> title from you by a great big world

Even’s first therapist is a nice lady in horn-rimmed glasses called Mette, who shakes his hand when he walks in and offers him a wrapped humbug. Even has never liked humbugs, but he takes one anyway out of politeness, unwraps it, puts it in his mouth, traps it behind his teeth. Through it, he says, “what does your name mean?”

“Pearl,” she says. “What about yours?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“That can be your homework for next time.”

He likes Mette, a lot. She speaks like she has all the time in the world, savouring each word as though they are humbugs in her mouth, which at the beginning he maybe finds a little annoying, but grows to appreciate. In his everyday life, which he sometimes feels like he lives on hyper speed, having a slow, deliberate weekly presence in his life, in the form of dusty candies and horn-rimmed glasses, is a cornerstone he comes to value.

Before he gets his final diagnosis, the doctors sort of hop around a variety of other disorders: ADHD, for a while, for which the medication fucking sucks, just makes him sluggish and irritable, and then depression, which is sort of half true, so the medication for that is a little better: settles his head, when he is in a dark recess. Does jackshit against the mania, though, until they finally fall on _bipolar_. It’s during one of these recesses, his head still muddied a little, when Mette asks him how it feels.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Hard. Dark. I’m always tired.” He turns his feet in together, until the toes of his shoes meet under the frame of his chair. “Ironic.”

“Why’s that?”

“Do you wear that on purpose?” he says, of her necklace. It’s a string of pearls.

Mette says, “Yes. But they’re not real.”

“Do you tell people that?”

“Of course not. I paid decent money for them to look real.”

“You told me, though,” he says.

“Why is it ironic, Even?”

“Doesn’t really feel like I have good fortune.”

Later, as he is putting on his coat to leave, Mette says conversationally, “you know, I wear fake pearls because the real ones give me a rash.”

Even pauses. “Really?”

“The universe has a strange sense of humour,” she says. “That’s why I wear the fake ones.”

“Are you saying I should pretend to have good fortune?”

“No,” Mette says, “I’m saying find ways around it. How does it feel? After the worst?”

“Like I have to learn to be happy again.”

The next time, with the customary humbug, Mette hands him a sheet of stickers.

“What’s this?” he says.

“Teach yourself to be happy.”

It’s a pack of forty-nine gold stars, seven by seven, the paper slippery in his hand. He doesn’t really know what to do with them, so he carefully folds the sheet down the middle, careful not to bend any of the stars, and tucks it into his pocket. “Thank you,” she says.

“Bring them the next session,” she says. “You can talk to me about the ones you’ve used.”

Even doesn’t get it, until he walks out of her office, and it starts to rain. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt and it’s not a far walk to the bus stop, but it’s still annoying, so he squares his shoulders, folds himself deeper into his hoodie, and puts his hands in his pockets.

Then, from down the road, he sees two people exit a store, halfway through lighting cigarettes. They step into the rain and the girl says, “ _Shit_!” and they quickly flick off the lighter, bending down to keep the cigarettes dry, and huddle underneath the awning. The boy says something and the girl starts to laugh, and Even pauses, watching as the boy takes both of their unlit cigarettes, puts them into his pocket, and pulls her into a kiss.

By the time Even walks past the shop, they’ve disappeared into the alley. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the sheet of stickers, and presses a small gold star to the wall where they stood.

*

After Mikael, Even goes through sheets and sheets of stickers covering his room. It’s not mania, though he knows his mum and dad think it is – they’ve been so fucking careful recently – it’s actually sort of the opposite: he feels like he has been submerged in a depthless void and is just floating, stagnant, caught in between the grains of reality, trapped in half-speed. He looks at the stars and remembers every single place he has left one and he wants to badly to climb out of the trench in his head but his brain can’t be tricked like he thinks it can because somewhere along the longest month of his life he forgotten that he is his brain so when he’s finished he’s just left in the middle of a shiny gold room with fingernails picked raw. He climbs back into his bed and puts his head underneath his blanket where he can’t see any of the stars and closes his eyes and thinks of infinity.

The lock’s been taken off his door, was done so in between the bathroom and the hospital, so his parents can come in whenever they want, though they always do carefully, like they’re aware they’re invading the privacy of an eighteen-year-old who should be too old to be looked after. At some point he hears the door open and his mum starts to ask if he wants some tea but then she stops, so he takes his head out from the blanket and sees her looking at the stars.

“Oh, Even,” she says, and she starts to cry.

He keeps his phone and the lights in his room switched off for six months. After what he did, after what happened, he had given up finding happiness. The gold stars are nothing more than a dumb fucking reminder of something he can never get back.

*

His first day at Nissen, Sonja kisses him on the forehead before he leaves, holds his face between her hands. “Have a good day,” she says, though these days it’s sounding more and more like an instruction than a request. Still, he smiles a little, kisses her cheek. “Try and find happiness.”

“I will,” he says, though he doubts it.

And then:

Across the quad, the sound of laughter. Ugly, full belly-laughter, and when Even turns he sees a group of boys but one of them is bent at the waist laughing, and he has blond hair that glints in the thin morning light and green eyes like the candles Even’s mum lights during the winter. The entire courtyard is grey and hazed in the thinning summer but this boy is in full definition, slow-motion and hyper speed all at once, and Even finds he can’t pull his eyes away for even a moment.

He doesn’t think there are enough gold stars in the world to describe what he’s feeling right now.

The bell rings, and the boys set off into the building, and Even watches them go, the way the boy, his boy, holds open the door and pulls off his hat, revealing more of his hair, and a strip of white skin at the nape of his neck that Even wants to touch. He watches him until the door has long since closed behind him and the warning bell goes, and in a minute Even will be late for his first ever day at this school, but he can’t find it in himself to mind.

He moves to the bench where the boys were stood. They have left no trace except a damp boot print against the seat of the bench, and Even traces it with his finger: is this his boy? Or one of his friends? He can see it: they were talking, the four of them, and in the lead up to the joke that made his boy bend at the waist in laughter one of his friends kicked his leg up, planted a foot on the bench, bridged in skinny jean. No—Even changes his mind, it wasn’t a friend, it was the boy, maybe residue energy, maybe frenetic in the chill, this is his boot print, and Even fits his handprint into it, thinks what it would be like to fit his handprint into him.

He just presses a gold star on the underside of the bench instead, and heads to his first class.

*

When Even and Isak move in together, Even sticks a gold star in the corners of each room. Isak watches him with a small smile, and when he finally gets down from where he’s been kneeling in the bathroom sink he peels one off himself and puts it on Even’s nose.

“What are you doing?” Even says with a laugh.

“You can’t put these in the bathroom,” Isak says, “they’ll go mouldy.”

“And you’d know?”

“Science.”

And Even laughs because he doesn’t think he has ever known happiness like this, happiness that is secure that he can take down the stars from the bathroom and not feel afraid that this is a room that will not be filled with joy. Any room that has Isak in it will be happy, and Even doesn’t need gold stars to tell him that.

Early on Even learned that what he feels for Isak is greater than gold stars, it is more than just happiness, so in the back of his sketchbook he has a page that he puts a sticker on every day he’s known Isak, because counting each moment is arbitrary and wasteful: a moment with Isak feels infinite and a moment without him feels hazed. One day he feels brave enough to show him, and Isak simply stares down at it with a small, private smile that’s only reserved for Even when they’re alone, and he touches them with the tips of his fingers. “How many?” he says.

“Two hundred and four.”

He traces the ridge of them at the very top. They have gone a little grey with wear. “Since you started?”

“Since I saw you.”

Isak looks at him in surprise. “Even then?”

“You made me happy,” Even says, simply. “I think I would’ve been glad just to watch you from afar.”

Isak’s face does something soft and melty. This one isn’t as private, he does this whenever Even says something like this – so Even only does it more – and Jonas has made fun of them for it before. Secretly Even loves it, he loves how Isak looks at him the same way he looks at Isak, like he is something special that he can’t believe he gets to have. Even has never really felt this special before, maybe in the early Sonja days, but Isak makes him feel important. He makes him feel like his shiny gold room was never able to: maybe because the gold stars were never what made him happy, but what they represent. And now he has two hundred and four days with two hundred and four gold stars to prove spent knowing Isak and he has never been happier.

Later that night, they are lying in bed, sweaty and satiated, perspiration collecting in their collarbones. Even traces the bumped landscape of Isak’s acne scarring on his back with the very tip of his finger, the way that always makes Isak shiver, and then Isak is reaching out for the stickers on the floor next to mattress, and sticks one to Even’s cheek, places the lightest of kisses on top of it.

Even smiles, feels the movement unstick it a little. Isak makes a grumpy sound and pushes it in with a finger, holding it in place.

“What’s that for?” Even says.

“You make me happy, too,” Isak says. He sometimes still gets shy with stuff like this. “I—just wanted to let you know.”

Even squeezes him tighter.

He knows.


End file.
